Twitter empire strikes back with 'WookieLeaks'

It hadn't hit Twitter's top 10 trend list at the time of this post, but it's only a matter of time before "#wookieleaks," the hashtag du jour, overtakes "Immigration Law," "Inception," and yes, even "StarCraft" as the topic all the cool kids are tweeting about.

Just days after the close of Comic-Con, the annual ultimate geek fest in San Diego, nerdlingers are invading the microblogging service with a slight variation on the 91,000-odd secret U.S. military documents posted on WikiLeaks. While the government, military and news outlets attempt to assess the fallout from the formerly top secret documents, the tweeting public is turning its attention to a topic that —admit it — is never very far from any true American's heart or mind: "Star Wars."

Hence the #wookieleaks hashtag. Switch up and add a couple of letters to WikiLeaks and you've got "wookie." And "wookie" is just one way you can spell the Sasquatch-like species to which Han Solo's second-in-command Chewbacca (aka Chewie) belongs.

Some of the more brilliant "#wookieleaks" posts include:

@Geniusbastard: "The Death Star has a serious design flaw in one of its exhaust vents. #wookieleaks"

@Uranowski: "Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father #wookieleaks"

@hagenr 'Those really were the droids you're looking for.' #wookieleaks

The #wookieleaks frenzy seemed to catch hold early Wednesday afternoon. Attempts to track down the very first #wookieleaks post proved unsuccessful. The #wookieleaks posts continued to multiply by the hundreds every few minutes, grinding the Twitter website's script to a halt.

Wired.com's Danger Room blog joined the trend early on, replacing regular posts tagged #WikiLeaks (a story Wired helped to break) with these posts:

@dangerroom: Han Solo changes name of Millennium Falcon to "Xe Services" #wookieleaks

@dangerroom: Sith publicly deny killer drone program even after Emperor's jokes at the celeb-packed Death Star Correspondents Dinner. #wookieleaks

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@dangerroom: "I find your lack of faith in COIN... disturbing." #wookieleaks

Those, like the majority of the tweets pushing #wookieleaks toward the top of Twitter trends, are serviceable. (Plus, repeated lame jokes about Princess Leia's cinnamon buns hair are to be expected. But a close review of thousands of #wookieleaks tweets reveals some Twitter users are totally plagiarizing others — don't think nobody notices!)

For the comedy purist however, the best #wookieleaks come in the form of those listed earlier — leaks that not only reference "Star Wars," but stay true to what actually qualifies as sensitive material that would cause real problems if leaked within the confines of the "Star Wars" universe.

Then again, there is a faction of increasingly irritated "Star Wars" purists on Twitter echoing the tweet of @theonetruebix: "Hey #wookieleaks people. It's #wookieeleaks. All this cleverness is kind of undermined if you don't know how to spell Wookiee. ;)"

But that's a whole other Nerd War …

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